


Overboard

by MonaLisa709



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Acquaintances To Enemies, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Bad Decisions, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fountain of Youth, Girl Saves Boy, I'm Bad At Tagging, If You Squint - Freeform, Light Angst, Little Mermaid Elements, Mermaid Elizabeth Swann, Pre-Curse of the Black Pearl, The Author Regrets Nothing, but Elizabeth is an adult, but its there i suppose, james is disgraced before cotbp, not a terrible amount, scruffington, some plot from On Stranger Tides
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26029189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonaLisa709/pseuds/MonaLisa709
Summary: Captain James Norrington has been sent to capture a French privateer; many fruitless months later, he grows desperate. Just as he thinks his life is over, a mermaid named Elizabeth rescues him and sets him straight... Not without some conflicts.Disgraced Norrington AU, Mermaid Elizabeth AU
Relationships: James Norrington/Elizabeth Swann
Comments: 9
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This AU idea has been nagging the back of my mind for a couple weeks now, so I finally hunkered down and wrote it. I hope you guys enjoy!

The French had evaded them for months. The Royal Navy had set sail, led by one up-and-coming Captain James Norrington, around the sunny end of springtime. The wind now had a cold sting to it as James stepped out of his cabin, and they could only thank God that the shores surrounding Tortuga where they were currently sailing rarely ever saw snow.

James was never one to wear his heart on his sleeve; on the contrary, he preferred to keep his feelings bottled up deep inside so that he merely forgot they were there to begin with. But even the crew could catch on that something was irking their captain. He paced a little more pointedly, he regularly toured the ship with dark circles under his eyes, his temper had grown short. They hadn't made any progress in months, sailing aimlessly around the globe searching for privateers that James wasn't even sure existed anymore. 

Even now, as he stood by the side of the ship, inspecting the darkening horizon with his spyglass, frustration began to creep up his spine. He knew his superiors had to be impatient by now. This particular French privateer had robbed the Crown of a fleet's worth of wealth, and while they hadn't been very clear or demanding in terms of his deadline, he just knew that he was overstepping. 

He pocketed his spyglass with a small glare to the growing clouds, crossing to the starboard side when a spit of land just barely came into view. Ordinarily, he would have noted it in the log and kept on the course, but behind it (did he dare believe it?) there was a white flash of sails. It was enough of a spark of hope for James.

He turned to the helm and cried, "There! Do you see it?" The helmsman hesitated, earning him an impatient "Now, Mr. Smith!" 

Smith hurriedly changed their course, sending them straight towards the island as it slowly began to rain. The clouds that loomed overhead churned and rumbled, but James could not be bothered. He gripped the rail until his knuckles turned white, setting his jaw and watching the slowly approaching land with an unforgiving glare. 

A bolt of lightning struck in the distance, and a gentle rain quickly turned into a merciless downpour, clouding their view of the island. Smith almost spoke up in regards to this, but as if James could read his thoughts, he barked over the rain, "Onward! If there is a hope the French are there, we cannot let this pass us!"

Smith almost spoke, but held his tongue. Surely their captain knew better; surely there was some grand design he just couldn't see. He kept the ship steady despite the roaring wind, keeping the bow pointed squarely forward.

The waves grew higher around them, remaining just manageable enough. Water sloshed across the deck, knocking a deckhand onto his face near James’ feet. He tugged the boy to his feet, who in turn dashed below deck with a cautionary glance backwards. James turned back towards the rail, holding onto it with both hands. 

The ship rocked and dipped in the waves, blown one way by the wind but forced in another by Smith’s firm grip on the helm. Smith gritted his teeth and called down to James, “Sir, I can’t hold her on course for much longer! We’ve got to lower the sails!” James braced his feet on the deck as he faced the helm, shouting, “We will do no such thing! We have to harness this storm to our advantage!” 

The other officers on the poop deck watched on with concern as Smith yanked the helm back into place and said, “I don’t think the ship can take this much longer!”

James marched up the stairs the best he could against the rain, one hand on his hat to keep it somewhat in place, and yelled above the wind, “You will keep those sails raised or you will be relieved of duty!” Another officer stepped in, placing a warning hand on his shoulder and saying, “Christ, man! Can’t you see the ship is struggling? Lower the sails or the ship will capsize!”

James faced him silently, steeling his gaze as his heart hammered in his chest. If they did not overtake the French vessel now, there were good odds that they would lose them in the storm. He couldn’t risk another wasted month.

“Captain, the sails won’t hold against this wind!” Smith said, desperation leaking into his voice. James didn't respond, staring rapt at the nearing glint of French sails through the thick sheets of rain. One of the other officers pushed past him with a huff, calling out to the crew, “Lower the sails! Quickly now!”

The crew ondeck scampered to the rigging, slowly climbing up to the sails in fear of being blown off of the lines. James met the officers’ gaze, keeping his expression blank before moving back to the rail. He watched the gleams of white through the storm, his pulse thundering in his skull. His thoughts were an endless torrent of ‘we’ve found them, at long long last we’ve found them’, and his nails dug into his palm in some small attempt to anchor him to the present. 

Another bolt of lightning struck near the island’s shore, followed close behind by a deafening clap of thunder. James was soaked to the bone, his dark hair plastered against his neck and forehead, but in that moment he almost felt like the King of England.

The Dauntless grew closer still, and the French sails came clearer into view-

Revealing five warships, readying their cannons.

James blanched. 

He cried for the crew to come down from the rigging as the French advanced forward, and the crew below deck rushed to ready the cannons, but well before they were prepared, the lead ship began their onslaught.

Cannon fire tore through the Dauntless. Chain shot shredded the rigging and splintered one of the masts, sending men into the unforgiving waves. The storm above them raged, and James could only watch in horror as the ship and his men were destroyed.

The combined cannon fire and thunder rang in his ears, sounding like the gateways of hell, until it hardly registered to him when the deck below his feet and the railing he held in his hands exploded in a hurricane of splinters. An overwhelming pain washed over him as he was thrown over the side of the ship from the force of the blow.

The water was freezing when he hit the surface, drawing a loud gasp as all the air rushed from his lungs. As he struggled to breathe, the stabbing pain in his chest grew, and he looked down with watery eyes to see a large piece of wood protruding from his uniform. The water around him was quickly turning red. 

His limbs grew heavy as he looked up at the pathetic remains of the Dauntless, sinking slowly into the gulf as the blinding pain and merciless cold overtook him.

Water filled his lungs and he sputtered weakly, blood pouring from his mouth and chest. His muscles screamed for oxygen, and his mind begged him to swim back up to the surface, but the strength he had left bled out, leaving him sinking slowly to the bottom.

Lightning crashed but all he could hear was a faint clap as the water numbed his senses. The shadows of the ships above him grew as his vision began to fade. 

His eyes lulled shut and the last thing he heard before he lost consciousness was a voice, garbled by the water but beautiful and alien. It sounded like an angel, and he was powerless to resist the draw of her song. He was pulled into cold arms, and in that moment he was sure death had welcomed him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James is saved from the brink of death by what he thinks is an angel, and handles it the only way he can.

While the Navy had certainly earned its superstitious reputation, James had never bought into the tall tales the other sailors swapped when it was far past the time they should have been asleep. Mermaids and Davy Jones and magic compasses and green flashes had no base in reality, so he never took them to heart. 

When he awoke to a beautifully strange woman cradling his face with cold hands and kissing the air back into his wounded lungs, his first thought was that heaven (or hell) seemed awfully different from what he'd heard about in sermons. He blinked wearily and his vision cleared, only for him to see pink water filled with broken wood and the bobbing dirty blonde hair of his angel. His mouth tasted like iron.

She grabbed him by the torso and began to swim deeper, tugging him close enough to feel that the rest of her was just as cold as her hands. He shivered and sent a flurry of bubbles up to the surface, catching a glimmer of scales out of the corner of his eye as she swam. She brought him through the wreckage with a sheer power that James knew couldn't come from a human being. 

Just as he looked at her to silently question what was happening, silently pondering if he had eternal damnation to endure as the cost for his blindness, she placed a hand over the wood in his chest, shoving it back out with a swift, stunningly painful movement. He screamed, a warbling noise distorted by the water, and she stuck her fingers in the wound, causing him to scream again.

All of the sudden her hands grew terribly hot, and his body seemed to stitch itself back together. In that moment, he knew he couldn't be dead, because this pain was so incredibly vivid.

Once his wound was healed, she kissed him again and forced the air back into his spasming lungs. He looked at her in awe and horror, clinging to her as she swam away from the wreckage.

Within a matter of minutes, she brought him to the surface of the water, right at the end of a small fishing dock. He gasped for air, grabbing the wooden ladder leading into the water and holding on as if it were the only thing keeping him alive as he heard her whisper something lost to the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears. In his bewilderment, he missed the sound of his rescuer slipping away back to the depths. 

After a few minutes of calming himself down from the brink of hyperventilation, he gingerly climbed up onto the dock. 

His hair was disheveled and hanging in his face, and his uniform was in quite a frightful state. Along with the ragged hole in his shirt where his wound used to be, the gold rope had been plucked off in places and one of the sleeves was torn at the shoulder. His hat was long gone, lost when he was thrown off the ship by the cannon blast.

He made an ill attempt at doctoring his appearance before heading off to do the only rational thing he could after all this: to get completely and utterly drunk.

\---

After all the years she'd been alive, Elizabeth never tired of the sea. 

The depths that she'd barely scratched the surface of, the awesome power inside the eye of a hurricane; she even liked the ships that brought the strangely land-bound humans out onto the water. She wasn't sure she liked the humans though.

The sailors dragged to the depths by the others seemed terribly one note with their sorrows, making her reluctant to find a proper victim of her own. She was perfectly content in watching from afar.

That was until five ships arrived in their cove. 

Elizabeth and the others knew that sailors were dangerous in numbers, especially aboard their ships. It would have been easy enough with their own numbers to lure the sailors of one ship, maybe even two, but five was too much of a risk. So they stayed in the dark depths, largely ignoring the happenings above. 

The ships waited, and the mermaids were puzzled. Humans weren't known for their patient spirits. It was only when a storm began to rage, and a sixth ship approached from the horizon, that there was movement on the five.

The sixth ship drew closer despite the storm, and the five finally acted after days of nothing. They surged forward with the wind behind them, and began to fire their weapons. Elizabeth had never seen a battle so one-sided.

Sailors from the sixth ship quickly filled the water, meeting their fate with the others before their wounds had the proper time to bleed. Elizabeth watched with her usual passiveness.

Another sailor, dressed in a more decorated uniform, was thrown into the water, bleeding a little more heavily than the rest. A giant piece of wood had lodged itself in his chest, and as he sunk, he remained still, staring blankly at up the surface of the gulf.

She didn’t know what it was, possibly some odd intuition she held, but she knew she couldn’t let this one die. She sang to him as he approached, and he let his eyes lull shut as she held him to her chest.

She took him away from the wreckage, healing his wound as they went. All things considered, he was taking things moderately well; he only screamed.

She held him close and took him to the docks, where the smaller boats cast off from to fish. He clung to the wood and she whispered to him in a voice musical but firm, “Make good of your second chance.”

She looked back at him before diving back into the gulf in a flurry of scales. If you were to ask her, she would have said she thought she’d never see him again.

\---

The former Captain James Norrington stumbled out of a nearby tavern with a split lip and a limp, shouting back inside, “I said what I said!” A half-empty bottle of rum came flying at his head but he ducked just in time, leaving it to shatter on the uneven cobblestone. He grimaced at the waste of perfectly good liquor, going to kick a loose pebble down the street but missing and tripping over his boots.

He had spent the last few days blind drunk, only taking a break from his drinking to pass out in the alleyways.

He was pleasantly surprised by the lack of judgment in Tortuga’s many taverns and burlesque houses; he only ever got thrown out when he started a scene, which is exactly what he’d done tonight. His hair was matted, the ribbon he tied it back with long gone, and his uniform had been reduced to wrinkles and stained fabric. His medals had traded for more liquor than he’d expected, but his coin purse was slowly running low, and he knew he’d have to work eventually.

He could never return to the Royal Navy. Hell, he couldn’t return in the first place. He doubted any vessel around here would willingly take him back to Port Royal, where soldiers swarmed the place like ants. He could manage to drown his shame in rum, but he knew it wasn’t long before it learned to swim.

But in all the confusion, he’d managed to swipe the man’s flask, and he took a generous swig from it as he shuffled his way down the street. 

Now that the gold rope had long been plucked from his coat and his hair hung in his dirtied face, he blended quite nicely with the rabble wandering from one pub to the next. The ambitious gleam in his emerald eyes had dulled, and in his increasingly rare moments of sobriety, he wondered what the hell had gone wrong.

Only he knew exactly what had gone wrong. He’d been too proud. He couldn’t bear to lose, so he’d put every one of his men in danger. The crew was most likely dead or prisoner, he wallowed to himself just last night. 

And no matter how much his mind dwelt on it, he couldn’t explain how he was still alive. No one alive could swim like his guardian angel, and a large part of him wanted to blame his crazed recollection on the drunken stupor he was continuously in. There was no way he had that wound; he must have gotten a small cut and remembered being more drastic than it really was. And there was absolutely no way that an angel, a mermaid, whatever that strange hallucination had been, had brought him all this way. He must have landed on a piece of wreckage and drifted the rest of the way, or he had read the charts wrong and they were far closer to Tortuga than he thought. 

He found himself often wishing that he had died on the Dauntless with his misled men. It should have been him, floating face down in his failure. When he was drunk enough, swaying in his seat at the bar and slurring his words, he would tell anyone who would listen that he deserved every bit of this misfortune (however, as far as anyone in the pubs knew, James spent his days drinking nonstop, and that didn’t sound very much like misfortune to them). 

He stumbled down the street and made it to one of the more reliable alleyways to sleep in, finishing off his flask before tossing it on the ground. He collapsed into a pile of hay someone had abandoned there a couple nights ago, groaning out loud as a roll of thunder sounded in the distance. It started to drizzle softly, and he tugged his coat over his head, grumbling to himself.

Despite the cold, he was drunk enough to fall unconscious fairly quickly, slipping into his usual dreams of blonde hair and cannon fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this is turning out to be so much fun!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elizabeth confronts James before an opportunity arises for him. He can't help but accept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah yes, a plot is emerging!

Elizabeth hated herself for thinking about her sailor as much as she did. 

She should have drowned him, she thought more often than she'd like to admit. She should have drowned him or left him to die, bleeding out until his punctured lungs filled with water and he sunk to the sea floor. 

She felt weak, letting her emotions manipulate her like that. She was supposed to be the manipulator, the seductress, the siren, but her heartstrings were tugged by a sailor, no older than herself no doubt. 

At the same time, she still thought of him. She wondered what he'd done with himself after she left him on that dock; she'd always been curious, and now was no different. 

She swam to Tortuga in a matter of minutes and found the docks where she'd left him, staying underneath the water as she watched the bustling activity up above. 

Deep down, she knew it was foolish to think she might see him walking past. Hell, it was foolish enough to think he was still on the island at all. Humans were very restless people at heart. Still, she couldn't help but wonder. 

\---

James woke with a start, blinking wearily and raising an arm to cover the sun blazing overhead. He was surprised he'd slept so much, considering he could still remember last night. 

Seagulls screeched down at the docks and it felt like needles being pressed into his skull. He winced and opened his flask, tipping it back into his mouth and tossing it aside when he realized he'd finished it last night. 

He stood on shaky legs and stumbled out of the alleyway, holding the side of his head and grumbling to himself. By this time of day he would usually head to another pub and start the cycle all over again, wallowing in his own self-pity until he was too drunk to care, but today something felt different. He made his way slowly towards the docks, tripping over his own feet and knocking into a fellow drunkard.

The man was a good bit taller than him, as were the men he was with. James recognized one of them as the man he'd fought the night before, and swore internally. 

Before he could slip away, he was recognized and the man yelled in the nasally voice that James remembered had been the start of their argument, "'Ey, that's the bastard that stole my good flask!" 

One of the other men grabbed James by the back of the jacket as he tried to escape, while two others grabbed his arms. The one on his right yelled, "Let's toss 'im off one o' the docks!" and the rest cheered. 

They dragged him out of town despite his struggling, hardly drawing any attention at all (there were much more interesting things going on than a drunk getting thrown into the bay). His head was still pounding and the sky was dreadfully bright, and as they forced him onto the pier he almost thought a swim would be a nice change of pace. 

The waves crashing underneath the pier and the raucous noise from the nearby taverns rang in his ears, and he hardly put up a fight as they hoisted him onto their shoulders.

He hit the water with a large splash; it wasn't as cold as he'd expected. 

\--- 

Elizabeth saw him being thrown into the water, and from that distance she thought it might have been a different person.

A mess of brown hair obscured his face and his clothes were muddied, but when she took him in her arms to tug him above the water, the familiarity of his weight struck her. 

He sputtered for air and she dragged him by the hand underneath the pier, watching for the shadows of the men who had thrown him over. She clapped a webbed hand over his mouth but they were gone fairly quickly, their boots thudding on the boards above. 

Once they were gone, hooting and hollering down the street on their way for more rum, she slapped him across the face. 

The cold water sobered him up quite nicely, and his eyes were wide and alert as he cried in a voice far deeper than she'd expected, "What in the blazes was that for? And who the hell are you?" 

She fixed her glare on him, and something struck him. Anger melted from his gaze to be replaced by confusion and her sailor uttered slowly, "Wait... You're... You're the one who...?" She frowned as he backed away, squaring her jaw as he stared at her in shock.

"So this is what you're doing with your second chance? Drinking yourself half blind?"

He almost scoffed at her, the spite returning to his features as he retorted, "I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't ask for you to save me, if that's what you think you did. What I do with the pitiful remains of my life is none of your bloody business."

She was taken aback. She'd expected some sort of shame, remorse, maybe even tears, but the man in front of her betrayed nothing but venom.

"So that's it? You'll just waste away like some sort of... Some sort of louse?” she spat at him, “I thought you humans had this bizarre sense of duty, or purpose, but you have nothing!” 

He chuckled darkly and she continued, “My mercy is not a gift to be so carelessly thrown away! Now tell me, what are you still doing on this god-forsaken island?” 

He simply turned away from her and began to swim back to the end of the pier, murmuring above the noise of the waves, “You should have let me die in peace.” Her eyes widened and she yelled after him, “Perhaps I should have!” He looked back at her with a smirk, shaking his head before hoisting himself onto the ladder. 

She was so angry she could have cried. She stayed under the pier, staring at the ladder for a few minutes after he had left and his footsteps faded. 

\---

His head ached and every squelch from his boots was a nail to his forehead, but James knew he needed another drink. 

As the days went by, he had assumed that blonde angel was some sort of hallucination, or foggy memory, or drunken daydream that his mind confused with reality. But he’d seen her again. She’d found him again.

He resented her. He would have hated her less if she ripped out his heart and showed it to him.

His career had been his entire life. He squandered everything away in a lapse of judgment, and now he had to live with the lives of his crew hanging above his head. He did mean it, he wished she had let him die.

He thought she must be particularly cruel to make it so he kept on living. He thought a great many things, as he strode a little more steadily towards a tavern. He stepped through the door, only to hear the familiar screech of a fiddle and the drunken shouts of a visiting crew. He held his head in one hand and stood in the doorway, looking back at the sky and squinting in the sunlight. 

A flash of black in the distance caught his eye, and he looked towards the docks. He almost couldn't believe what he saw. 

A black ship, with black sails and a black hull, was floating in the bay, and if it weren't for the fact that he hadn't had a drink since last night, he would have thought that this was another hallucination. 

This tavern was the best place to learn of any new goings-on in town, so he steeled himself to enter again. (He also told himself he wouldn't drink, but he could never promise that.)

A band of what he could only recognize as pirates crowded the tables, downing pint after pint of rum and ale and hollering at the wenches. The captain, a tanned man with dreadlocks and beads in his goatee, sat at a table with an older gentleman (presumably the first mate) and withdrew a large chart that seemed to be made of wooden slats from his overcoat.

James sat down at a table nearby, reluctantly declining a pint. His hair, still wet from being tossed in the bay, hung in his face and dripped onto his uniform as he regarded the crew. They were quite the rag-tag group, but he figured things couldn't currently get much worse. 

He called back one of the wenches and asked, “Who are they?” The young lady set down her tray and said, “They’re the crew of the Black Pearl, and that’s their captain, Jack Sparrow.” She pointed to the man with the beaded goatee, smiling and blushing heavily as he gave her a wink.

He thanked her, catching the attention of the older gentleman and asking in a hushed tone, "Might I ask where those charts lead?" He almost received an answer before Sparrow chimed in, saying with an odd slur to his voice, "And pray tell, why might you be privy to this particular information?" James fought the urge to roll his eyes, answering, "I'd like to know where the ship is heading before I join the crew."

Sparrow replied with nothing but a smirk, downing more rum as the first mate said, “And I suppose you’ve got experience on a ship?” James flicked the lapel of his jacket, saying, “Plenty, I assure you.” 

"Well then, what might we have the enormous pleasure of calling you?” the first mate said with a bit of a smirk. James narrowed his eyes at the pair and opened his mouth to reply but Sparrow interrupted, “We’ll have enough time for all that nonsense later, Gibbs. Now, you asked where this fine ship and crew were headed, under the guidance of these… puzzling charts.” James nodded slowly, changing his mind and accepting a pint of ale from a passing wench who gave Sparrow a small wink. 

Gibbs grabbed the charts and unrolled them with a small flourish, revealing a set of rings that showed a peninsula and a chalice held by an angel and a skeletal figure. Sparrow placed a finger on the chalice, saying slowly, “One of the configurations on this map leads to the Fountain of Youth.” 

James was, to put it lightly, taken aback. There was no way such a thing actually existed; the Spanish had searched for the Fountain of Youth for years. But the charts were right in front of him, and in that moment he decided he couldn’t miss this expedition for anything.

Gibbs chimed in again, “But, unfortunately, part of the process involves a mermaid’s tear, which means we’ll have to capture one in Whitecap Bay…”

James hesitated, looking down at the table before downing the rest of his pint. Sparrow gave him an odd, questioning look, before Gibbs queried, “It seems like you’ve got something you need to say. It’s best you don’t keep that to yourself.” James frowned and looked at the charts again, taking a deep breath before looking back up at the pair.

“You don’t have to go to Whitecap Bay for a mermaid.”

“What on earth do you mean? You know one closer?”

\---

Elizabeth could hear her sailor enter the water from half a mile away. The sun had long since set, leaving faint amounts of light fading on the horizon as she reluctantly swam towards the dock. 

She hoped for his sake that he’d come to apologize to her, but a large part of her knew that he probably wouldn’t. She had no real idea why he’d want to talk to her, especially after this morning’s nonsense, but she approached anyway. 

He stood about waist deep in the water, holding onto the ladder. She emerged from the bay, her hair clinging to her shoulders and back as she tucked behind her ears and out of her face. “What do you want?” she asked, regarding him with the slightest bit of curiosity.

He watched her carefully, saying nothing as the net came down around her.

She let out a shriek, clawing at the net and screaming at the men tugging her out of the water. Her gaze flew to him, and she glared at him with wide, furious eyes. 

He didn't look away. His expression remained neutral as he watched her struggle inside the net, but as he met her gaze, she almost caught a glimpse of remorse. 

She didn't care. 

She stared daggers through him and gritted her teeth as they drug her off of the dock, wincing as they slung her onto their shoulders. Her sailor walked along behind them, now watching her with a cold detachment that she was quickly growing to hate. She knew what was coming, now that they carried her away from the bay, and she looked down at the passing wooden planks.

Her tail split in two, the scales melting away like sea foam. She could see the confusion on his face and simply returned his gaze with a grimace, tugging her knees to her chest the best she could. 

She didn’t look up for the rest of their small trek to their ship, plotting silently as they carried her aboard. 

The crew gave her a spare hammock below deck, unfortunately next to her sailor by his request. She turned her back to him, trying to catch a slight bit of sleep despite the incessant rocking of the ship and swaying of the hammock.

Just before she finally drifted to sleep, she felt something large and warm being draped over her. She tugged it around herself and dreamed of the comfortable, inky black of the deep ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the lovely reviews so far! I love every single one of you.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Black Pearl makes its way to the Fountain of Youth. Tensions rise between Elizabeth and James.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the wait on this chapter!

James hadn’t swabbed a deck in years. He couldn’t say that he’d missed it. The sun beat down from overhead and his back hurt after hours of kneeling and scrubbing, but it was a very familiar task, and he went through the motions robotically.

What wasn't familiar was the thoughts churning through his head as he worked, stealing his attention until he realized he had been scrubbing the same section of deck for twenty minutes now. 

He'd given her his shirt; he wasn't sure why. 

Ever since they let her take a walk on the deck and she tried to jump over the side, she was escorted by two crew members at all times. James could often hear them coming from across the bustling deck, their boots thudding above the crashing waves of the open sea. 

She hardly ever said a word, occasionally snapping at the men watching her. It seemed that she hated them all, and she certainly carried herself as such. One tried to help her down the stairs to the galley but she refused, just as a large wave jostled the ship. She fell down the stairs and scraped her palms on the rough planks, wincing as Cotton bandaged them. James caught himself watching her face for pain as she handled things from then on.

Her sea legs were dreadfully shaky. Hell, her legs in general were shaky, and being out at sea did nothing to help that. She walked as slowly as she could without letting anyone catch on, taking careful, planned steps that only seldom resulted in her being jostled onto the deck. 

Her steps were unsteady, and she looked around the deck with cautious, plotting eyes, but whenever he saw her, he could swear they were harboring a goddess aboard their ship.

She stood on the deck now, clutching his shirt tight around herself and watching the sea with a silent yearning as the wind whipped her hair around her face. He found himself looking at her, looking away quickly when she met his gaze.

\---

That evening, when the sun had long since dipped below the horizon and the waves calmed, James climbed down from the rigging to find her and her makeshift guards standing by the mast. He looked at the three of them with confusion before one of the crewmen spoke up in a gruff voice, "The mermaid wants to speak with you."

James nodded curtly at the pair, saying, "I'll watch her, alright?" They nodded and walked below deck to the galley, probably to see if Cotton had left any food out.

As soon as they were gone, she stepped closer and seethed, "How… dare you…" From this distance, he could see the flecks of gold in her furrowed eyes. 

He answered her with silence, wondering if anything he could say could make her anything but angry. He decided it wouldn’t, and she continued, “How dare you barter my life like some token in exchange for a position on a ship? Do you have any shred of honor left?”

He froze. 

Deep down, he knew she was right. But he would be damned if he let her know that.

“What’s your name?” he asked instead.

“Wh- Excuse me?”

“Your name. I don’t like calling you ‘the mermaid’ all the time.”

“And you think that gives you some sort of moral high ground? The fact you won’t take another step towards treating me like a creature?”

He looked down at his boots and took a deep breath before answering, “No, absolutely not.”

Her gaze softened ever-so-slightly, not that James saw it, and she replied with that same edge in her voice, “It’s Elizabeth. And yours?”

“James. James Norrington. Formerly Captain Norrington, but you know how that turned out.”

Elizabeth smirked darkly, looking out at the ink black waves. The moon shone through scattered clouds up above, giving everything a silvery glow.

She watched the waves for a moment, the smirk melting from her face as the wind gently carded through her hair. She asked numbly, “So what do your companions plan on doing with me once we reach our destination?” He hesitated. A soft roll of thunder sounded miles away.

Nothing he could think of to say seemed right. Sparrow and Gibbs had been exceedingly secretive in their plans; they were given a new heading every day from the charts the captain possessed, and the only thing that anyone knew was the fact that they needed Elizabeth alive, for the tears had to be fresh. 

He answered her truthfully. “I don’t know. They… They need you alive…” He took in a deep breath before saying, “We’re supposedly on our way to the Fountain of Youth.” 

It was her turn to freeze. She turned to face him and said slowly, “I should have known. I’ve heard the stories… of the other mermaids, being taken from their coves for their tears…” Her expression hardened and she stepped away from him, saying, “What do you think they’ll do, to get those tears?” 

He had no answer for her. 

The wind began to blow more persistently through the blackened sails and a bolt of lightning crashed in the distance, accompanied by a clap of thunder close behind. The silence between them grew before James broke it, saying, “You should head below deck. A storm’s heading this way.”

She nodded slowly, taking a few deliberate steps towards the stairs. Her expression remained blank as she walked away from him, and he almost turned away before she broke into a sprint towards the rail.

For a split second, he thought of letting her go.

He caught up to her with more difficulty than he’d expected and grabbed her around the waist before she could reach the edge, holding her firmly as she let out a yell and thrashed in his arms. 

She kicked at him and screamed at the top of her lungs, "Damn you!" as he carried her down the stairs. Her guards dropped their hardtack and rum and grabbed her wrists. 

Captain Sparrow, who had been brought out from his quarters by her screaming above deck, eyed the four of them and said, "And what on God's green earth is going on?" James answered in as neutral a tone he could muster, "She tried to jump overboard again." 

Sparrow simply raised his eyebrows and stepped closer to Elizabeth, saying slowly, "Missy, it would be much easier for all of us if you swallowed that enormous pride of yours and showed a little cooperation. I really don't want to take away your fresh air privileges but you're making it a little difficult to consider anything else." Elizabeth raised her chin with a challenging glare, narrowing her eyes before spitting in his face.

Sparrow blinked slowly, wiping his face with the back of his sleeve. The guard to her left offered with a smirk, "Will it be the brig then?" Sparrow hesitated before turning to James, who was trying to slip away quietly to the deck, “You there, Norrington, keep a weather eye on this… lady, for the night anyway.” James nodded curtly, looking down at his boots as the other three left him alone with her. He could feel her gaze like daggers.

“The moment you fall asleep, I’ll be in the sea.” 

“We’ll see.”

\---

She hated him. She really did. Everyday, she cursed the moment she decided to save his life. 

She hated the rocking of the ship. She hated the sun beating down on her when she went above deck. She hated the sailor’s eyes on her constantly. The only thing she didn’t hate mindlessly was the spray of the ocean that reached her despite the height of the ship; it felt like her home missed her.

It wasn’t for lack of trying that she remained aboard. The sailors seemed to follow her everywhere after her first attempt, and dammit, they were so much stronger than her out of the water. She hated them all, and made sure they knew it. Especially him, the one she’d been foolish enough to call ‘her sailor’. She knew his name now; James was the name of her frustrations. She would have screamed them if she were ever permitted to be alone. 

She spent the night of the storm lying in her hammock, her back turned to him. She gritted her teeth and checked over her shoulder every so often, disappointed to find him still whittling on that infernal hunk of wood, with his back also turned to her.

Eventually, she broke the silence.

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Well, after you so deftly made your intentions clear, sleeping would hardly be in my best interests now, would it?”

She didn’t respond, and she heard him turn around.

“Elizabeth?”

“Don’t say my name so casually. You stole me from my home and yet you speak to me as if I should just set this aside.” 

“...What do I call you then?” 

“Miss Elizabeth, at least. I’d alternatively accept Madame, or M’Lady, whichever suits you.”

She heard a small snort. She retorted with a smirk, “You asked. I answered. I don’t see what’s so bloody funny, Norrington.” He chuckled and carved a large chunk from the piece of wood in his hands, leaving it to fall to the floor.

“You know, the only time anyone’s ever called me ‘Norrington’ was during my days as a deckhand. The captain would shout at me from the poopdeck, ‘Norrington! I want that deck as polished as my boots by the time I get down there!’” He paused. “He was always a bit stern with his crew, even with the younger deckhands.”

It was her turn to snort. “And I suppose you were so different, Captain Norrington?” she spat with a mean smirk, turning her back to him in her hammock. He flinched as if she had just struck him. She didn’t care.

The sound of his knife chipping away at the wood halted, leaving the waves crashing against the hull. He set his things down and rested his elbows on his knees, holding his head as he slowly let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. 

“...That’s in the past.”

She turned back around and swung her legs over the side, her hair hanging in her face as she said, “Good God, are you hearing yourself? Your crew died, but do you know how many sailors I’ve seen drowned?” 

He faced her, his eyes glistening in the lantern light. “Were they ever there by your hand?” 

She countered quickly, “And your crew was by yours?” And the pieces fell into place.

The cruelty in her frown melted away as she said, “The sixth ship… To face those odds you’d have to be crazy.” 

“Through the storm… I only saw the lead ship. I’d been searching for them for so long, I-... I couldn’t afford to let them escape.”

He took in a shaky breath that she could hear over the waves, saying in a hushed tone as he turned away from her, “Once I saw the other ships, there was nothing I could do.”

She stared at his back for a minute before lying in her hammock, her arms draped over her stomach as she thought. He didn’t say another word to her for the rest of the night.

Sleep came over her the moment she shut her eyes, and she dreamed of wreckage floating in the water.

\---

James hardly slept at all.

He shut his eyes and opened them again for what felt like the thousandth time that night, letting out a steady breath. It had been hours since they’d gone silent, and he wasn’t sure how many; he’d always had a poor sense of time. He still had no idea how many days he’d spent reeling drunk through Tortuga’s streets, and he was quickly losing track of how many days the Pearl had been at sea. Days mulled together until it all felt like one long tedious chore.

He’d swabbed the deck so many times that he practically had the wood grain memorized. 

As far as pirating vessels went, James figured the Pearl had to be laughable. Sparrow hardly counted as a captain with his lax policies and standoffish manner; the crew was hardly bloodthirsty, and besides their love for treasure and the occasional bellowing of a sea shanty, they could have all been mistaken for fishermen. Not that he was complaining, of course.

He feigned sleep for a bit until he couldn’t stand being alone with his own thoughts, standing up quickly and staggering back into his hammock. He hadn't stumbled aboard a ship in years.

It almost occurred to him to look back at Elizabeth’s hammock and see if she were still there, but then it occurred to him that he didn’t care. He stretched his arms with a small grunt, running a hand through his hair and standing again slowly. On his way to the galley, he found the crewmen meant to watch Elizabeth still asleep in their hammocks, so he elbowed them firmly with a muttered “she’s still here” as he left.

The day went by just like all the others. James didn’t see Elizabeth above deck until it was time for dinner, which was perfectly fine with him. He passed her with a tight-lipped smile that she returned in the form of the tiniest glare. He took his time eating his dinner, making idle chatter with the gap-toothed man across the table. 

By the time he went back above deck, she and her guards had left. 

\---

Days ran together like watercolors, and it was a week before they finally caught a glimpse of land on the horizon.

Activity onboard the ship slowly grew less monotonous until the crew moved restlessly around the deck like the schools of fish Elizabeth would chase in the gulf. She watched them with a hollow gaze, and it was all she could do not to get sick.

As the island and White Cap Bay came clearer into view, she felt her heart rise to her throat until it was hard for her to breathe. Black spots dotted her vision and a shallow wave sent her reeling against the rail, where her knees buckled underneath her. 

Her guards grabbed her by the shoulders under the impression that she was trying to dive overboard again. She glared up at him and said more shakily than she'd ever have preferred, "Let go of me!" 

The captain yelled up the rigging to James, who escorted her back below deck. She scowled at him the entire way. 

It was an hour of silence for Elizabeth as the ship neared the island. James sat across from her in his hammock, but for once she didn't feel like making his job hell; she was much too tired for that. 

Eventually, he spoke up. 

"What happened?"

"I fell over, what did you think happened?"

He let out a patient breath. "Have you eaten anything since you came aboard?"

"I didn't come aboard, I was kidnapped, and no, I have not." 

"Well that would explain things." 

He stood up and went to the galley, coming back with hardtack before it occurred to her that she could have left. But she figured, 'what's the point? They'll only catch me again, and maybe this time they'll throw me in the brig.' She countered herself, 'Ha, throw you in the brig for the ten minutes we've got left on this filthy ship.'

He offered her the bread and she snatched it out of his hand with a vindictive glare, forcing herself to take small bites. She was glad for the excuse not to talk to him.

The ten minutes she had guessed turned into twenty to finally reach the shore, but she was still taken off guard when the captain came below deck. 

"Norrington, take missy here to one of the longboats." James nodded curtly in reply.

He offered her his hand and she smacked it away.

\---

The crew took longboats to the shore. Once Elizabeth stepped onto the beach, with her guards holding her arms in tight grips, everything overwhelmed her and she passed out. 

They handed her off to Norrington, and he begrudgingly carried her as they began to trek the jungle, led by Captain Sparrow's compass.


End file.
